HyperChain: Blockchain-Based Medicine Authenticity Verification in Bangladesh
Kowshik Chowdhury, Rahma Bintey Mufiz Mukta · 2024
The high rate of counterfeit medications in Bangladesh endangers public health and undermines trust in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Traditional medication authentication methods are often tampered with or do not ensure transparency in how medicines are produced and handled. Blockchain technology offers promising solutions by providing data transparency and integrity through its salient features, such as decentralization, immutability, and auditability. This paper proposes HyperChain, a permissioned blockchain solution using Hyperledger Fabric, specifically designed to improve transparency and mainly authenticity in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Compared to existing systems such as Medledger, Hyper-Chain provides a more robust storage mechanism (combining off-chain and on-chain storage) and back-end API implementation, ensuring scalability and real-time integration. It also mitigates critical security risks, such as 33% node attacks, which remain unaddressed in Medledger. Furthermore, HyperChain outperforms existing solutions in terms of throughput and latency, providing a scalable and trustworthy framework for combating counterfeit drugs and boosting trust in Bangladesh’s pharmaceutical supply chain. Experimental results underscore Hyper-Chain’s superior performance and its potential as a benchmark for secure and efficient pharmaceutical supply chain systems.